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The basic principals of hypothesis testing are reviewed, including the development of the hypothesis, the statistical assumptions made, and the test of the hypothesis. The appropriate experimental design and sampling technique for evaluation of hypotheses posed are discussed. Because the analysis of variance involving the F-test should be used in a wide variety of geological experiments, emphasis is placed on this analysis. Many geological experiments result in the measurement of one or more factors on a continuous scale, whereas others are recorded in a discrete fashion. This necessitates the use of a covariance analysis to evaluate the effect of discrete and continuous factors in the same model. Orthogonal comparisons are discussed as they are used to evaluate specific hypotheses following the general test of hypothesis in the analysis of variance or covariance. All procedures discussed are illustrated using actual palynofloral data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]